Police are police, even in Africa.

In Tanzania, you need to get a million licenses and permits just to provide tourist services. Local police particularly love stopping cars with white people for "document checks." Drivers happily pay them off with a couple of bucks.

According to our guide, if you actually get caught doing something wrong, you can usually work it out on the spot without any official paperwork.

The government tries to fight this by paying officers almost a third of officially issued fines, but it doesn't really help much.

There's also this weird paranoia about photographing law enforcement here. If locals see you trying to take a picture of a police station, they immediately start yelling that you can't, telling you to put the camera away. And our guide kept saying under no circumstances should you photograph military or police, because they might confiscate your memory card (or camera).